RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Siely on Tuesday 15 April 25 20:44 BST (UK)
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My FH is a real struggle to research. How vitally important it is for grandparents to tell their family as much as they can.
Encouraging young genealogists is something we can all do, maybe appreciating the importance of genealogy should be part of the citizenship curriculum at school ?
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Way back I did a 'family tree' pic for each of our grandchildren when they were just babes.
Very basic it was a laminated image showing them, their parents, Grandparents, Great Grandparents with photos and their dates.
These stayed in their toybox and, now and then (as they learned to talk), questions were asked about what these people did and where they lived etc.
Now they are older (early teens) they look at the expanded (by many generations) tree and ask yet more questions.
The seeds have been sown, the back up images of documents etc are archived for them.
Its up to them if they continue, but Granny has given them documented evidence of what she knows about their ancestors.
Best I can do :-)
Boo
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It is priceless when parents / grandparents do things like that, it saves hundreds of stressful.frustrating and upsetting hours later on.
Opinions vary but I would say that a child knowing his/ her 8 great grandparents with full event date/location details is a good standard of knowledge.
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Encouraging young genealogists is something we can all do, maybe appreciating the importance of genealogy should be part of the citizenship curriculum at school ?
...Opinions vary but I would say that a child knowing his/ her 8 great grandparents with full event date/location details is a good standard of knowledge.
Although many of us would sympathise with this point of view, I think you might struggle to get it accepted on a wider basis.
There is so much that children today are expected to learn in the few years they are at school the idea of adding genealogy as anything more than a passing reference in a single lesson would be a hard sell (I think money and personal finances would score much higher on the 'what kids need to learn' scale)
There's also the ticklish issue of many children not knowing who one of their parents is, let alone all 8 ggparents. (I'd fail, as one of my 8 is always going to be an 'unknown')
I'd also think twice about making something compulsory because making children research their family history might put them off for life - in the same way you hear people (proudly) saying they have no interest in maths, geography, religion, or history because they hated it at school.
I think it is something better left largely as a hobby people come to of their own accord, with just small nudges in that direction from parents and grandparents.
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My FH is a real struggle to research. How vitally important it is for grandparents to tell their family as much as they can.
Encouraging young genealogists is something we can all do, maybe appreciating the importance of genealogy should be part of the citizenship curriculum at school ?
I agree with your first sentence (with qualification), but not the second. Family history is about family, and should stay there. Youngsters should learn how to discover or research various things, as part of science.
The qualification is that spoken information can be misquoted, or misinterpreted by young ears, ending up as 'Chinese whispers' but nevertheless regarded as gospel. My gt-grandfather allegedly died after a rescue by an Anglesey lifeboat in 1877, while one of my wife's gt-uncles had been butler to the Duke of Northumberland. Recent use of the internet has shown that the death was by typhoid six months after the lifeboat rescue (he had been marooned by rising tide), while the 'butler' had been footman or valet to the duke's younger brother.
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Are mothers usually better at talking about family? I remember a conversation with mine when I was about 12-13. I sketched out a small tree of her family on paper - and I still have that! The rest came decades later. When I was about 25 my father mentioned by-the-way that his grandmother had been brought up at a certain farm - which opened up whole new horizon when I got around to investigating it.
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I remember quite a few years ago children researching their family trees as a school project. their teacher would bring them to the Records Office, show them the Parish Registers and Census. The Archivist would give them a short talk. Some you could see were interested, others looked bored.
My friend's daughter had to do hers, but it was actually her Mum who took it up as a lasting hobby.
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I think it comes under life skills not an academic subject. Many of us have been saying for decades that the number of school academic subjects could reduce and life skills training could increase for the majority of pupils and they would greatly benefit from it.
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I think it comes under life skills not an academic subject. Many of us have been saying for decades that the number of school academic subjects could reduce and life skills training could increase for the majority of pupils and they would greatly benefit from it.
That was understood - the point was there are so many 'life skills' that currently don't get taught that making a list of everything which ought to be added would put 'family history' a fair way down the list.
The reason people have been suggesting changes for decades with nothing much changing is because adding something in means taking something away... and it isn't easy deciding what to take away because there will be knock-on effects.
My friend's children had an introduction to the topic of family history in primary school via history classes finding out about someone in your family who died (or was involved) in the First World War - with the option of making it someone who had lived in your street or neighbourhood for those who didn't have family connections. I reckon that is about as far as anyone can reasonably expect genealogy to be embedded into the general education curriculum.
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I'm sure we all have / had drawers full of unlabelled photographs of unknown relatives! I know my parents did, mostly my paternal side, but unfortunately most of them got cleared out before I got interested, and my mother's sister had all the maternal side, and again, got rid of them. A cousin of my father provided some, but wasn't certain on many of the people - so the moral is, record them (in pencil on the reverse) with as much detail as possible, before it's too late!
TY
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I'm smiling at the references to genealogy being taught/touched upon in schools.
Back in around 2011-ish a friend was telling me his G Granddaughter's class was doing a project which touched on looking into your family history.
The class teacher told the children that it could take a long time but if their family researched the family tree, they 'may' be able to find out about previous generations -possibly even find out about their G G Grandparents. Most of the class were impressed with that, they were still in Primary school and viewed GG Grandparents as being 'ancient times'.
Friend's G Granddaughter apparently looked puzzled and said 'but if I want to know anything about when GG Granny was young, I'd just ring her! or ask next time we visit! '
Her G G Granny didn't die till about 4 years later, aged 105 (marbles all intact and functioning) :-)
Boo
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I'm sure we all have / had drawers full of unlabelled photographs of unknown relatives! I know my parents did, mostly my paternal side, but unfortunately most of them got cleared out before I got interested, and my mother's sister had all the maternal side, and again, got rid of them. A cousin of my father provided some, but wasn't certain on many of the people - so the moral is, record them (in pencil on the reverse) with as much detail as possible, before it's too late!
TY
Great advice , I have had undocumented photos too , it's very frustrating .
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My parents had a large photo album with notes under each photo, and quite regularly I would ask my mother to get it out and she'd tell me who each person was. "That's my cousin Bob"; who during my research found was Robert Halliday S...,..g ". Mother was one of three sisters who met every week for a cup of tea and a bun. Their conversations often mentioned a specific surname "The B........s", which was a large clue that a widow with children had married into my family.
One sunny day in 1961 my mother mentioned that two of my male cousins were researching their family trees and asked me if I was thinking of researching my family tree. I obviously wasn't interested as I gave a negative answer and carried on living my quite busy life. Years later when those male cousins left home my aunt excitedly told me that her son had discovered that earlier paternal generations had owned a castle and a village!!! I took up family history after I retired when I learnt that my maternal grandmother's oldest brother had been killed in WWI and I hadn't known about him, although I'd seen his photograph on an older relative's wall. I might have felt a tad proud when I passed around names and documentation of our maternal grandmother's European mainland paternal ancestry, which was only due to the advent of the computer and the World Wide Web, which wasn't available when my cousins were driving around England visiting many registration offices looking at their records.. . None of my list of helpful free websites are now functioning.
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I'm sure we all have / had drawers full of unlabelled photographs of unknown relatives! I know my parents did, mostly my paternal side, but unfortunately most of them got cleared out before I got interested, and my mother's sister had all the maternal side, and again, got rid of them. A cousin of my father provided some, but wasn't certain on many of the people - so the moral is, record them (in pencil on the reverse) with as much detail as possible, before it's too late!
TY
Sadly many family photos of the younger generation are on digital cameras / phones now. 🙁
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None of my list of helpful free websites are now functioning.
ah, tell me about it!
I still have so many bookmarked and can't bring myself to delete-
Some defunct, some bought up.
Very little that functions on the internet after one's demise that doesn't mean still paying a bill.
Rebel
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Wilcoxon, I used to teach and the influence of social media / music video / computer game culture is worrying and many schools are now reviewing their mobile phone policy. I think the ability to concentrate has been affected, not good news for encouraging next generation of FH hobbyists.
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We have a big pile of old photos and someone somewhere along the line has helpfully written things like "my mother" on the backs... I don't know who wrote it ;D
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My late mother in law did not start labelling photos until she was getting on in years. There are pictures of her grandson labelled as her son and other 'inaccuracies'